Pulse Best Practices
Many of our customers have asked if we have any best practices we can share about creating and managing pulses. While this article is not exhaustive, we have compiled some tips below.
Pulse Creation
One question new users to Kelvin often ask is how many questions should I start out with on my pulse? In general, we recommend a "crawl, walk, run" approach which means to start small and build up to something more complex over time.
- Tip: Your first student pulse can be something as simple as a couple of questions about the student: e.g. In general, would you say that you like school? What is one thing you wish your teacher knew? Watch our video tutorial on how to create your first pulse.
- Tip: Check out our recommendations if you are not sure where to start when creating your first pulse.
- Tip: You can help increase participation by communicating about your pulse prior to the survey window opening. Read our guide on how to communicate, and take advantage of our resources such as the 1-page handout for teachers and staff, letter to families, and our slide deck template Introducing Students to Kelvin!
Pulse management
The most active pulse customers may find themselves overwhelmed with the number of pulses appearing in their pulse list and dashboard. Our updated pulse list feature makes cleaning up a breeze!
- Tip: At the start of a new school year declutter your pulse list by selecting the "archive" function for any pulses you don't plan on repeating. You can always search for any archived pulses by selecting "archived" in the status bar. Learn more about the updated pulse list page features here.
- Tip: Add a new pulse window rather than recreating a previously administered pulse. One example is a district pulse that has been scheduled regularly throughout an academic year for which the district would like to see longitudinal data across multiple academic years. Rather than creating a new pulse with the same questions, you can simply add a new pulse window or windows to continue into the next year. Read more about managing your pulse schedule.
- Tip: At the beginning of the school year we recommend that system administrators review and update their admin users lists, especially for those users that may be manually managed (e.g. system admins, district admins, and site admins such as principals, counselors, etc). You can find more information here about managing users.